Goose

Two of my best friends from college visited this weekend, and both of them are waaay better-read than I am and also horrible enablers, so I ended up with a fresh TBR stack.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel Way late to the party on this one, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Mantel is so good at sketching out characters with strong, deft, economical lines, the prose is just a delight. I was warned that the beginning was a little slow but even then I felt like it moved right along.

Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck This was a gift from one of my friends, and not one I would have picked off a shelf, but I can see why she chose it for me: story of a chaotic affair taking place in East Berlin around the time of collapse of the DDR. Should be cool!

Hellions, by Julia Elliott Short story collection, also a gift from friend, apparently mixing Southern Gothic, horror, fairy tale elements, and a million other ingredients. I was impressed with this interview with the author, starting with "Reading The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in high school stirred an early awareness that the distinction between “literary” and “genre” fiction was bogus and that 'literary realism' was never going to be my thing."

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell This author was (probably still is?) a professor at my college and this was her debut novel that came out while I was there. I never read it but always meant to. Story of a young teenage girl who grew up on her family's roadside alligator farm attraction, who goes on a quasi-mystical swamp journey of initiation in the midst of a family crisis? Or that's my vague understanding, anyway. Found it in a used bookstore and picked it up.

Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari Another rec from a friend which finally arrived at my local bookstore this week. If I'm gonna continue writing, gardening, osprey watching, reading, and still have room for other hobbies in the future I gotta be able to focus!

And finally, two little zines about mushrooms and woodlouse, which will both be sent off to new homes soon!

Busy morning! Did the AIDS Walk with my coworkers this morning (which was nice but quite shrimpy, basically a one mile walk around the perimeter of a park), then checked on one of my osprey nests, then stopped in at the library and put volume 2 of Berserk on hold, got some lunch stuff from the grocery store..... took a nap. Mowed the lawn, which I don't like doing this early, but if I let it get too thick and long my dinky little electric mower can't handle it. I was thinking of taking my seeds out of the freezer and planting them, but I think I'm gonna give them another week.

I'm thinking about taking a break from correspondence until I can finish this fic chapter, which is coming up on 3 months since the last update, yikes. If I really buckle down I could probably get it done in a week, I hope.

I've started and deleted probably five posts here, and I'm realizing how much fourteen years on tumblr trained me to avoid personal disclosure. I think on tumblr I got very good at communicating the general flavor of who I am through the collage of curated reblogs and additional tags, but no exact thoughts or feelings that someone could piss on the poor about. And now it's very hard to actually compose and post sentences and words without thinking either "well this could be misinterpreted in xyz ways" or "who cares?"

Anyway! I like writing fucked up fanfiction about twisty, complex characters. I'm currently reading The Once and Future King by T.H. White, the Berserk manga, and rereading one of my favorite epic longfics from the golden age of Kylux. I like looking at birds (and occasionally identifying them). I like native plant gardening, a new interest this year. I'm old enough to have been on livejournal but never was, so there might be a bit of a learning curve here.